Ladies’ Ultimate Grand Canyon Gear Guide

Let’s face facts. Men and women are built differently. With smaller torsos, wider hips, and narrower shoulders, women need more than just down-sized dude apparel. That’s especially true when gearing up for a three-week trip of a lifetime on the Grand Canyon section of the Colorado River. The gear needs to be comfortable and form fitting without sacrificing performance when paddling, camping, hiking, sweating, and freezing through the sunbaked, salt-lined, extremely parched landscape of the Grand Canyon.

Here are a few favorite pieces of gear I brought on my first Grand Canyon trip this spring. All of these items performed well under the Grand Canyon’s challenging conditions and met women’s-specific dimensions and needs.